Shinichi Sawada: Agents of clay is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States. For more than two decades, Sawada—who is based in Japan’s Shiga Prefecture—has produced a mesmerizing variety of alluring ceramic figures. Sawada’s creatures are singular and inventive, existing somewhere between the natural world and the artist’s imagination. The surfaces are significantly worked, with repeated linear patterns, horns, scales, teeth, bumps, protrusions, and often, multiple faces and eyes. These hybrid animals, insects, birds, and dragons have presence and personality far beyond their modest scale.

The sculptures are made in centuries-old Japanese tradition, fired in single-chamber anagama kilns, also known as cave kilns, fueled by wood fires that are stoked for days at a time. As elemental vapors circulate through the kiln and settle on the sculpture’s surfaces, they create finishes that range from russet red, orange and umber, to ashy white and deep, velvety black.

This exhibition brings together a selection of works that Sawada made between 2004 and 2021. They have been produced with support from Nakayoshi Fukushikai Welfare Association, which offers social and developmental support to a range of neurodivergent and disabled individuals. Sawada, who has nonspeaking autism, has been making ceramics since 2000, prolifically creating objects in series, and revisiting certain characters and forms again and again. Their infinite variances underscore Sawada’s artistic breadth, originality, and creativity.

The exhibition is accompanied by a publication, Shinichi Sawada: Agents of clay, featuring images of works in the exhibition, an introduction and acknowledgements by co-organizers Lisa Melandri and Jen Sudul Edwards, Ph.D., and a scholarly essay by independent curator, writer, and arts administrator of contemporary art and craft, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy.

Shinichi Sawada: Agents of clay is organized by Lisa Melandri, Executive Director, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and Jen Sudul Edwards, Ph.D., Chief Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art at The Mint Museum.

Shinichi Sawada (b. 1982) lives and works in Japan’s Shiga prefecture. Since 2000, he has attended Nakayoshi Fukushikai, a social welfare facility that supports disabled people. In 2020, a solo exhibition of his work traveled from the Museum Lothar Fischer in Neumarkt to the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin. His work has featured prominently in major group exhibitions around the world, including The Encyclopedic Palace at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013 curated by Massimiliano Gioni and The Doors of Perception at Frieze New York in 2019. His work is held in the permanent collections of numerous public institutions, including the Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Halle Saint Pierre, Paris; and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca.